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By this pond there is a rough old oak, which is the peculiar home of some titmice; they were there every day, far back on the frost and snow, and their sharp notes sounded like some one chipping the ice on the horse-pond with an iron instrument. Probably, before now, they have had a nest in a crevice.
In the middle of the court was a large horse-pond built round with stones, to which the water was conducted by metal pipes communicating with the river Peene. In the middle of the pond was a small island, upon which a bear was kept chained.
The triangular green, with its stocks and horse-pond, overlooked by the grey benignant church-tower, seemed a tame exchange for seething Cheapside and the crowded ways about the Temple or Whitehall; and it was strange to think that the solemn-faced rustics who stared respectfully at the gorgeous stranger were of the same human race as the quick-eyed, voluble townsmen who chattered and laughed and grimaced over the news that came up daily from the Continent or the North, and was tossed to and fro, embroidered and discredited alternately, all day long.
The farmhouse was not only no more than a farmhouse, but was one of those farmhouses which seem always to be in danger of falling into the neighbouring horse-pond. As it crept downwards from house to stables, from stables to barns, from barns to cowsheds, and from cowsheds to dungheaps, one could hardly tell where one began and the other ended!
"No, I wouldn't go for to say another word, sir; because, if ye do say another word, I know a man as will drag you down out o' that cart, sir, I know a man as will break your whip over your very own back, sir, I know a man as will then take and heave you into the horse-pond, sir, and that man is me Sergeant Appleby, late of the Nineteenth Hussars, sir."
Solitary cows were seen; the smoke of a mud cottage; a cart piled with peat; a donkey grazing at leisure, oblivious of an unkind world; geese by a horse-pond, gabbling as in the first loneliness of creation; uncooked things that a famishing boy cannot possibly care for, and must despise. Ripton was in despair.
They seized him, fat and big as he was, as if he had been a rabbit; and although he kicked and screamed lustily, carried him out of the house. I saw them give him some vicious bumps against the walls as they went out of the door into the village, where they dropped him into the first pool of mud, which represented the village horse-pond. By-and-by Omar Beg came down to dine with us.
Why, your honour, I was about ten years old when I walked in my sleep, and I found myself wide awake in a horse-pond that stood near my father's house. Member. Well, but you said at the commencement of your evidence, that you were asleep, and heard the prisoner now before the court make use of the threat towards Corporal Ragon. Sergeant. Fait! did I, on my oath, and that's no lie, either. Member.
Who persuaded them into letting him see if he could drive? Who landed them all in a horse-pond? Who escaped, flying gaily and unscathed through the air, leaving the narrow-minded, grudging, timid excursionists in the mud where they should rightly be? Why, Toad, of course; clever Toad, great Toad, GOOD Toad!
Dare I reveal to him that I have two legitimate and three natural children? Dare I repeat to him the history of my youth? Dare I confess that at the age of seven I poisoned my sister, by putting verdigris in her cream-tarts, that I threw my cousin from a swing at the age of twelve? That the lady's-maid who incurred the displeasure of my girlhood now lies at the bottom of the horse-pond?
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